


and you're teasing me by tearing down the sun

by hesperides



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Incest, Jealousy, M/M, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:40:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hesperides/pseuds/hesperides
Summary: “Ohhh, so Nakkun curses any boys that try to kiss him? That explains why you’ve always got such a miserable expression, everyone who gets close to you gets one look, then turns to stone.”
Relationships: Sakuma Ritsu/Sakasaki Natsume
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	and you're teasing me by tearing down the sun

**Author's Note:**

> technically a sequel to that one reimao fic i wrote but you don't really have to read that for this make sense

“That’s not really what I wanted, though?”

“The cards don’t listen to the whims of those it holds in their hands, nor the ones who wish to partake in their knowledge.”

Ritsu stares down dully at Natsume where he’s seated near the foot of the bed. His cards are arranged in a purposeful pattern on the comforter that he probably explained to Ritsu before he started, or maybe the last time they did this, but it’s not like he bothered to listen either time. He’s not exactly here because Ritsu cares about anything he has to say.

The card closest to him has a picture of a woman crying it on it, in front of a wall of swords. Natsume’s lips had pursed when he’d drawn the card, like it had displeased him, or maybe wasn’t what he was expecting. Again, it doesn’t matter all that much to Ritsu in the end. The pretense of getting his fortune told is just an excuse to get him over to the Sakuma house, into Ritsu’s room, where he can get a better handle on the flow of their conversations.

“So can’t you redo it? Make me another one,” Ritsu taps his finger on the edge of the card with the sad lady, making Natsume’s lip curl into an unpleasant grimace. He doesn’t like it when other people touch them, and Ritsu knows that, he picked up on it the last time they did this and he tried to rifle through the deck.

“I’ll need to charge you for a second reading.”

“That’s fine, Nakkun. Just do it.”

Natsume sighs, like Ritsu’s request is just  _ so _ childish, and maybe it is, but he’s still moving to pick the cards up again, stacking them back into the deck and preparing to start anew. He splits it half, shuffling them together with a kind of understated flair that must be something he does on autopilot, not bothering to look down as the two sets of cards cascade back into one in his hands. It’s these little moments, when Natsume isn’t trying to talk his way into sounding like he knows all the secrets of the universe, when Ritsu thinks he might actually be kind of interesting, if he cared enough to try and get to know him.

He doesn’t.

The first time Natsume read Ritsu’s cards for him, he put a little more flourish into laying down the spread. Now he’s all business, drawing one card from the deck before pressing it down on the blanket, explaining its possible meaning in relation to Ritsu’s question with a sort of practiced ease that speaks of his experience. In a school that actually had girls in it, there’s no question Natsume would have a sizeable following of his own. As it is, he’s just known as the Eccentrics’ leftovers, forgotten and left discarded with the rest of the wars casualties.

His bed frame is well used to handling movement, and doesn’t make a sound when Ritsu leans all the way forward, lying down on his stomach as he reaches out to put his hand over Natsume’s, stopping him from pulling the next card out.

“Ritsu-kun?”

“I think I changed my mind again, sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all, smiling innocently as Natsume looks down at him with barely concealed aggravation. “Let’s do something else instead. It gets boring to just hear you give me the same answers over and over.”

“That’s what you’ll get if you always ask the same questions,” Natsume clicks his tongue, his eyes lowering down to where Ritsu’s hand is still lingering over his own. 

“It’s too much effort to think up new ones,” it’s difficult to shrug in his current position, but Ritsu is good at what he does, and can convey the same sort of reaction in the lazy lilt of his words, slow and meandering as they fall out of his mouth.

He watches as Natsume’s eyes move from their hands to the far wall, and Ritsu knows what he’s thinking. That he’s here on pretense, that he doesn’t know if he can or should stay here any longer than necessary, that it’s strange to be here without Rei present, and despite it all, he’s reluctant to leave. Loneliness is something familiar to Ritsu, easy for him to recognize in others, even if he can’t bring himself to actually care about it.

Natsume sighs, carefully trying to pull his hand away from Ritsu’s, frown intensifying when the other boy wriggles further down the bed to maintain the contact.

“What would you rather do?”

“Mm, I dunno,” Ritsu’s eyes are level with Natsume’s hand from his current position, so he lets them travel up, along the length of his arm to the line of his neck, hidden discreetly under a turtleneck for reasons Ritsu has a few immediate theories on. Further on there’s the delicate line of his jaw, then his lips, and he’s more on the side of pretty than handsome, but then, so are most of the boys at their school. He knows Natsume doesn’t like hearing that, and he plans to keep that in mind, for the time being.

“Wanna makeout?”

His smile tugs wider as he watches Natsume start to pull away and then stop himself, trying not to betray a single emotion that he hasn’t already analyzed and deemed appropriate for the image he’s trying to convey. Ritsu’s had him figured out for a while, that he’s the dishonest type, the kind who will cling to any form of subterfuge to try and control the situation. He’s not great at it, though, inexperienced and over eager to look like the smartest one in the room. He slips up too much to maintain a solid upper-hand against anyone with half a brain, and it just makes him look  _ dumb  _ sometimes, really. Ritsu’s never seen much reason in wasting all that effort when he could just lie back and let his pretty face do all the work.

“Why?” his eyes are voice and sharp, like it’ll let him see anything more clearly in Ritsu’s intent. 

“Because I’m bored, and you’re bored, and I want to,” that’s all the reason Ritsu needs to do anything, as far as he’s concerned, but he can tell Natsume’s still not convinced. 

Ritsu pulls his legs under him, making it easier when he sits up on his knees. He allows Natsume to pull his hand away, he needs room to move anyway, to better shove the stupid cards out of the way as he moves forward and into Natsume’s space.

“You seem kinda bored, anyway, hiding out in the handicrafts clubroom when Mikarin isn’t there and talking to yourself,” he lets his words fall flat, no need to embellish them with any fancy body language or changes in tone. “That sorta seems like something a bored person would do, or a lonely one? It doesn’t matter to me, Nakkun. You’re cute, and it’d be a fun way to kill some time.”

He can see Natsume’s discomfort rise with each second that passes with Ritsu encroaching on his personal space, and the tension strung taut across his shoulders looks awfully uncomfortable to Ritsu, especially considering he’s not actually touching him yet. 

“There are plenty of other boys in our school who will play these games with you, Ritsu-kun.”

“Sure, but I’m not asking any of them.”

“Then why pick me in the first place?”

“Aah, you’re making this sound weird, it’s just something I felt like doing.”

Any other time, it would be the whole truth. Ritsu doesn’t have the energy for anything close to strategy or tactics these days, not that he needs to, with the way his unit is at the moment. He could say in any other situation that happening on Natsume a couple weeks ago and striking up a conversation with him was pure coincidence, and everything following that was a simple and natural progression. Maybe it would’ve been, had Natsume been anyone else, and Ritsu hadn’t gone through Mao’s text history just the day before out of boredom. 

He had, though, had seen all the juicy details about how Rei had cornered him in the kitchen during his last visit home, and now this is something else. Something Ritsu has a handle on in the loosest of terms, a feeling inside of him with teeth that snap and long to sink into someone else’s flesh. Ritsu doesn’t care about any of Rei’s weirdo friends or the “war” they had to fight to appease Eichi’s narrative of a revolution. Rei has always had weirdo friends and always will have weirdo friends that flit in and out of his life every few years and Ritsu has made peace with that, accepted that at least once a week he’ll have to come home to Rei holding court over some cotton candy colored humans arguing over the greater philosophical meaning of art in a cultural context. That was all fine and good, as far as Ritsu was concerned, let Rei collect society’s detritus to his heart’s content.

But his little play acting with Sakasaki Natsume? Did he really think he was fooling  _ anyone _ with that?

Natsume himself is still eyeing Ritsu with suspicion, backed all the way up to the end of the bed to try and put some space between the two of them. Despite this and his protests, Natsume hasn’t actually made any move to leave. His hesitance is a sign that Ritsu’s not just trying to draw blood from a stone, and it prompts him to lean forward, reaching out to rest his hand on top of the deck clutched in Natsume’s fist. His grip is tight, but it’s easy enough for Ritsu to draw the topmost card out, pulling it back to his face to squint at the illustration, turning it this way and that, as if it will reveal something more to him at a different angle.

It’s probably supposed to be referencing something Ritsu isn’t familiar with, four poles holding up a wreath with two people standing under it. He pulled it upside down from the deck, which Natsume’s mentioned  _ means _ something before, not that Ritsu’s actually listening when he goes off into his soliloquies about the imagery of each card and how it relates to his life and how he needs to reach deep inside of himself to find the will to reach out to people again because he’ll never be able to thrive and grow on his own—

His impassive expression turns to something as a grimace as he realizes that maybe he  _ is _ paying attention. 

“What’s this one mean?” he turns it to face Natsume, watching as his mouth presses into a thin line.

“Do you mean in general, or in direct relation to you?” his attention is more focused on Ritsu’s other hand, which has steadily been moving closer to his thigh this whole time.

“You’re supposed to be reading my fortune, aren’t you?”

Natsume’s gaze turns calculating, though not in a way Ritsu’s familiar with. There’s been plenty of times when he’s stood on the sidelines and watched as Rei carefully picked someone apart from across the room, figuring out exactly what they want and who talked them into it before they could even scrounge up the courage to look him in the eye. It’s not how Natsume’s looking at him now, however, which is strange, since that seems to be the only look he has most of the time.

“It would denote strife in the family. The person we’re reading for is in a place where they need the support and love of their family, but they’ve been rebuked somehow, and they’re feeling isolated and rejected,” Natsume says, flat and even, turning his eyes to card. “Does that ring true for you, Ritsu-kun?”

It’s a good thing Ritsu’s already decided that he’s going to tear him apart, because that might’ve gotten a reaction out of him otherwise.

“That’s right,” he makes sure to sound solemn and serious, giving a reluctant nod that he knows throws Natsume completely off. “I’ve been feeling so sad, and abandoned, and so alone.”

That shuts him up for a minute, which is all Ritsu needs to let the smile spread across his face, turning into a grin that’s sharp, unkind, and more akin to the curve of a blade than any expression of happiness. He never actually bothered to back off before and release the wealth of personal space he’s been invading, making it easy for him to toss the card aside and use that hand to caress the line of Natsume’s jaw.

“I just want someone to keep me company, Nakkun, why are you being so mean? I’ll make it worth your while,” Ritsu croons as he leans in again, not giving Natsume the option to evade this time when he bridges the gap between them.

He tries to jerk away initially, but that hand Ritsu has under his chin moves around, to the back of his head to thread into his hair. Natsume always smells good, some mixture of herbs of flowers that have different top notes depending on the day. This close it’s overwhelming, seeping into Ritsu’s hair and skin when he kisses him, permeating his clothes with a scent that he can’t quite place. It’s familiar, but conjures no softly lit memories of better times, likely something close to the herbs that his father keeps in globe shaped jars in his study, the ones that Ritsu used to uncork and huff when he was a kid. Something with a bite to it, as if it’s trying to keep everything else at a distance.

Natsume’s hand, trapped between the two of them, tries to push Ritsu away, shoving weakly at his chest in a way Ritsu can tell is insincere. The half-hearted, hesitant force he’s using is the same as Ritsu’s own mocking attempts to deny Rei earlier in the year, when there was still enough affection in his heart to only play at rejecting his brother. When Ritsu lets his tongue dart out, dragging along the seam of Natsume’s lips to work his mouth open, he exhales softly and surrenders to him. It’s easy to see how Rei picked him up so quickly, the faintest hues of Ritsu’s familiar behavior overlaid onto a different looking package, giving him the illusion that it wasn’t just Ritsu’s presence he was chasing after.

But Ritsu knows him. He knows that Sakuma Rei isn’t used to getting denied anything, ever, let alone by his beloved little brother. Sakasaki Natsume is a convenience for him, a simple stroke of luck that happened to present him with a cute, sullen boy with unnerving eyes who thought he hung the stars in the sky, tied in a neat bow and delivered at the approximate time his original model began growing tired of his insistence to stay up on his cross. Really, how could Ritsu blame Rei— he’s never struck out at him for any of his other dalliances, any of his other beloved humans that he keeps and discards, seeing them for exactly what they are: disposable. 

Which means that what Ritsu is doing here is extremely petty. Natsume isn’t a threat to him, and never was, but it’s the principle of the thing that’s crawled under his skin and made a home there. Rei is allowed as my floozies and weirdos as he can tempt into his bed. That’s fine. What Ritsu has  _ never _ allowed is Rei using someone else as a replacement for him, emotionally or sexually. All it took was seeing the way Rei reacted to Natsume calling him ‘nii-san’ once to figure what was really going on there, the breathless little smile he gave before crowding into the younger boy’s space and harassing him mercilessly.

If he was really so desperate for Ritsu’s affection, he only needed to maintain some level of self-respect in Eichi’s stupid ‘war’. Maybe he wouldn’t have become so utterly repulsive if he hadn’t played the martyr, and Ritsu wouldn’t be here now, having to teach him a lesson.

Natsume gives up at trying to push him away as soon as Ritsu’s hand gets into his hair and pulls, making a soft, shuddering sound that makes heat rise all along the back of Ritsu’s neck. Maybe the trick to making him tolerable was just shoving something in his mouth and shutting him up.

Since Natsume’s not pushing at him anymore, Ritsu decides to try something similar out himself. He tugs at his hair again as he lies down, not so much coaxing Natsume to follow him as guiding him, his other arm wrapping around his back to ensure his compliance. It’s nice to have something warm and solid on top of him again, and Ritsu luxuriates in the feeling like a cat stretched out under the sun. He gives Natsume’s lips one last stinging bite before he turns his head away to nose at the side of his face, grinning when he feels how hot the other’s cheeks have gotten.The blood practically hums underneath Natsume’s skin, and Ritsu can feel the moisture begin to gather in his mouth as he starts to salivate.

“See, it’s fun. Aren’t you having fun?” Ritsu beams up at him, expression alight in a way that only really happens when he’s tormenting someone else. 

“Doing that without getting someone’s permission will get you in trouble, Ritsu-kun,” Natsume says, pushing himself partially up and off of Ritsu with his palm planted firmly on the mattress. “This is the sort of behavior that invites curses.”

“Ohhh, so Nakkun curses any boys that try to kiss him? That explains why you’ve always got such a miserable expression, everyone who gets close to you gets one look, then turns to stone.”

That was mean. Ritsu knows it, by the way Natsume tries to rear back, only to be stopped by the hand Ritsu still has in his hair. He doesn’t move fast enough to justify Ritsu yanking on it, and while Ritsu certainly wants to, he’s got a good enough feel of Natsume now to know what route to take with him. He isn’t like Mao, who will happily let himself get steamrolled into any situation to avoid conflict, or just to please someone— he likes to pretend like he has a spine, in the right circumstances, when he’s set the stage to make him seem larger than life. That’s why Ritsu keeps dragging him to unfamiliar territory, away from Rei’s carefully constructed altar of teenage rebellion into someplace that will put him more on edge. 

It makes it easier to see him as he really is— utterly unsure of himself and shamefully insecure. Just like Ritsu is, every other day of the week when he doesn’t have someone else to bat around like a soft toy between his paws. 

“That would be a useful spell to have in my arsenal,” is all he says, though that glare in his eyes speaks of something more acidic bubbling under the surface. Self-deprecating, Ritsu’s almost sure. If it was directed at him, Natsume would just go ahead and spit it out.

“That’d make you kinda scary though, Nakkun, you’re better like this,” Ritsu punctuates his words by dragging the hand on Natsume’s back lower, until it can skirt the edge of his turtleneck and slip underneath it. “I can feel you blush every~where~, it’s so cute.”

The heat rises in the skin beneath his fingers as soon as Ritsu finishes speaking, like a direct response to his words. Natsume just looks flustered, frustrated that he can’t stop it, which just makes Ritsu want to take his shirt off and see what the rest of his body looks like all the more. 

“I never gave you permission to kiss me in the first place, Ritsu-kun.”

“Yeah, so you want me to stop? You can always leave if you want to, it’s not like I’d hold you down and force you to do anything.”

That hitch in his breath is too revealing, and it’s becoming more and more apparent why Rei liked this one so much. Always going for the kittens with claws, never full grown cats that might  _ actually  _ dislike it when you have them trapped.

Ritsu doesn’t ask permission when he kisses him again, harder this time, more demanding. The sound Natsume fails to swallow is one of pleasure, high and ashamed, the green light Ritsu’s been waiting for. No more resistance when Ritsu flips their positions, pressing Natsume back against the mattress and grinding their hips together with all the dumb, animal want that he’s been keeping on a short leash until now. Spit slick and bright eyed, he’s excited to hear what other noises he can coax out of Natsume, or rip, if it comes to that.

Rei wants to leave his toys out? Fine. As long as he doesn’t expect them to just be waiting there for him, as cute and unsullied as before, when he decides he wants them back.

**Author's Note:**

> well. woof.


End file.
